WASHINGTON — While military medics have been hailed for their bravery and lifesaving skills on the battlefield, many are out of work once they leave the military.

Nearly 100,000 Army veterans applied for unemployment in FY 2011, and nearly 3,000 of those were Army medics, said OIF veteran and Victory Media senior vice president Daniel Nichols in a House subcommittee hearing held over the summer.

“They were the third-largest military occupational specialty to do so,” he said, citing Unemployment Compensation FY 2011 data. “There is a problem, and we have not yet solved it.”

One barrier to employment, according to Nichols and other advocates, is that state licensing requirements often require military medics to redo their medical training in order to receive the certification necessary to be hired for a civilian EMS job.

Ben Chlapek, a recently retired Army veteran who spoke to the committee on behalf of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians, said that medics “receive some of the best training in the world and are some of the best there are at trauma care and other facets of medical care.”

Despite their advanced medical training, however, Navy independent duty corpsmen, Navy SEAL medics, Army special forces medics and Air Force special operations pararescue medics are often required to go through a yearlong paramedic class and several hundred clinical hours before they can take the test for licensure in the civilian sector, he explained. In reality, the former medics should be ready to take the certification test with a one-week refresher training, he said.

“Most of these medics can put external fixation devices on mangled limbs to restore an anatomical structure. … They can put in chest tubes. They routinely perform surgical procedures, and some are even trained in vascular surgery so we can tie vessels back together and restore circulation in the field in austere environments, when we have to maintain a patient for more than 72 hours,” Chlapek said. “These are procedures that are normally reserved for emergency rooms, operating rooms and trauma suites.”

According to how long since their licenses expired, unlicensed basic combat medics, Navy corpsmen or Air Force medics often are not permitted to take the EMT licensure test without first taking a full EMT course, which Chlapek deemed unnecessary.

“[They] have all of the training they need to challenge the test and should be allowed to do so,” he said in written testimony. “If they are rusty or need a review in a specific area, a weekend of refresher is plenty to prepare them for the test.”

Some states have made adjustments to their credentialing processes for military medics, but it varies from state to state, he said.